Various safety and sanitary concerns generally require that many instruments and equipment for various medical and dental procedures are utilized for a single patient or a single event and then disposed of. However, not all equipment can or should be disposed of after a single use because of its sophistication and associated expense.
For example, equipment such as scalpels, cauterizers, and other surgical tools are brought into contact with the patient and are ordinarily discarded, although a power source or instrumentation used with the tool may be readily sterilizable and/or sufficiently removed from the patient and associated hazards to permit re-use. The reusable instrumentation may include a plug and cable that is readily and easily attached to the disposable tool with a connector assembly. The plug and cable provide a connection between the disposable tool and the power source and/or sophisticated electronic equipment.
However, because tools (e.g., a knife) often have a working feature (e.g., the blade) fixed in a particular orientation, a tool must ordinarily be manipulated and handled so that the working feature of a tool designed for a particular task can accomplish that task. This problem can become particularly cumbersome in surgical environments where surgeons must often rotate their arm or wrist to obtain a desired blade position. This can in turn be an uncomfortable or unnatural position, but one which must be maintained for long periods of time during surgery, leading to fatigue. Furthermore, manipulating tools connected to the cords and tubing often present in medical applications can introduce twisting or other undesirable situations that can disrupt concentration and otherwise needlessly complicate the surgical procedure.
Also, surgical environments are often wet, which can create the possibility of malfunction as a result of interference with electrical connections.
These and other drawbacks are found in current connectors.
What is needed is a connector assembly that permits the orientation of a tool or other device to be modified while alleviating the amount of rotation or other strain on the part of one using the tool.
What is also needed is a connector assembly that permits operation in a wet environment, such as allowing fluid to flow internally through the connector assembly while sealing electrical connections from a wet environment.